MLB Rank 2025: Top snubs, surprises, overrated players, more - ESPN

Our ranking of the top 100 MLB players for the 2025 season is here! And that means it's time to talk about what we got right — and wrong.

We asked five of this year's voters — Bradford Doolittle, Kiley McDaniel, Buster Olney, Jeff Passan and David Schoenfield — to examine this year's list and let us know what they and their colleagues missed on and what surprised them the most. Who is too high or too low? Who did we leave out entirely? And who could leap onto the list — or even into the top five — in the future?

Here's what they had to say.

Schoenfield: Mookie Betts over Aaron Judge? Even acknowledging that the voting was conducted before Betts' illness, it doesn't add up for me. Value? Judge just had the greatest season ever for a right-handed batter and has eclipsed 10 WAR in two of the past three seasons. Durability? Over the past four seasons, Judge has played 569 games to 532 for Betts. Age? Judge is entering his age-33 season, but Mookie is entering his age-32 season. Maybe my fellow voters got swept up by Mookie playing shortstop and gave him extra credit for that. Too much extra credit. Judge arguably should be No. 1 on the list — and certainly not fourth.

Olney: I agree with a lot of the player feedback we got when we showed them our list — in too many cases, we seemed to buy in to what is expected of players rather than what players have already accomplished. The best evidence of this might be with Roki Sasaki: The fact that we had him ranked ahead of Jacob deGrom, Mason Miller and Shota Imanaga — just to name a few — before he has reached the fourth inning in any start in the big leagues is kind of bonkers. But hey, we're also fans, and we get excited about potential just as fans do.

Passan: I get it. Innings